Technology Lab —

Know anyone who worked as game dev for the Commodore Amiga?

Did you, or anyone you know, ever work in game development for the Commodore Amiga?

If so, I'd like to hear from you.

In August 2007, I started writing the history of the Amiga computer for Ars Technica. Seven installments were published, starting with the founding of the company, carrying on through the Commodore purchase and unveiling of the Amiga 1000, and looking at the struggles the company experienced in the years that followed. At that point, I had decided to leave the chronological tale and spend some time looking at various sub-cultures of the Amiga experience. The first subculture I tackled was gaming. I wrote one article about the games themselves, but then I turned to what I thought was more interesting: the lives of the games developers.

Turns out it's really hard to find contact information for people whose names appeared on Amiga game boxes in the 1980s! Some have become heads of game studios, while others have gone on to other projects, but one constant is that finding working email addresses for these folks is almost impossible. So I'm casting out a plea to the World Wide Internets. If any of you know someone who once worked on any Amiga game, whether it was as a programmer, artist, tester, or manager, please let me know! I'm interested in talking to you about your work, what tools you used, and the general environment of the time.

Also, a special thanks goes out to all the people who have emailed me over the last year, politely inquiring about the status of the next installment of the Amiga history series. I've had a busy year, but I'm excited about picking up the tale again in 2010.